You wait years for another interesting Nicole Kidman film and then two come along at once. Two weeks ago it was the elegantly malevolent Stoker and now here's sweaty, shameless noir The Paperboy. It's a film that takes Zac Efron's squeaky clean reputation and quite literally pisses all over it. Or more accurately Kidman does, since Lee Daniels' follow-up to Precious features a sequence where the Oscar winner urinates on the jellyfish-stung star of High School Musical.

As a finely drawn portrayal of loneliness and solitude encouraged by bottled-up emotions, Shell would be noteworthy enough. But it also contains two scenes – father and daughter interactions - that are deeply uncomfortable viewing. First-time feature director Scott Graham’s encapsulation of the life of 17-year old Shell and her father Pete’s life at an isolated Scots garage isn’t going to be quickly forgotten.

The Romanian New Wave continues producing cinema with a visceral power that’s hard to match anywhere in Europe, though to say it was alive and well would hit the wrong note, given the bleakness of the world it goes on depicting. Cristian Mungiu won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2007 for 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days, his lacerating abortion story set in Ceaucescu’s Romania, and last year his Beyond the Hills took high honours there again - the best screenplay and best actress awards, the latter shared between its two newcomer leads, Cristina Flutur and Cosmina Stratan.

It’s no exaggeration to say that The Wizard of Oz has a special place in the hearts of millions. For many, their last trip over the rainbow will have been watching its 1985 sequel Return to Oz, a commercial flop berated at the time for a too tenebrous tone. Yet Return to Oz was the stuff of numerous childhood nightmares, and so it's gone on to achieve cult status. That film's mixed fortunes proved what anyone could have guessed - that following in the colossal footsteps of Victor Fleming's 1939 MGM musical was never going to be easy.

Stephen Soderbergh would have us believe that this might be his last movie, which is difficult to believe. But if so, he's bowing out with one his sharpest, most devious and most watchable pictures, in which a shrewdly-chosen cast does full justice to a screenplay over which Scott Z Burns has pored painstakingly for more than a decade.

"I'm so worn out with it," a character remarks in a different context well into Rufus Norris's film Broken, to which one is tempted to respond, "Ain't that the truth!" A dissection of so-called "broken Britain" in all its jagged disarray, stage director Norris's debut film wants to be excoriating but is instead mainly exhausting and feels infinitely longer than its briefish running time.

Of all the pairings you might have thought would star in a cross-generational road movie, I suspect Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand would be the last names you would have put together, despite their undoubted comedic talents.

We've hardly gone wanting for big-screen robots of late – Michael Fassbender's inpenetrable cyborg was the best thing in Ridley Scott's overly ponderous Prometheus last year, while many have argued that Pixar reached its pinnacle with disarming robot-rom WALL-E in 2008. But with this oddball debut, director Jake Schreier is reaching for something different, something smaller and lonelier and more human, and if he never quite grasps it his pursuit makes for compelling viewing. 

It's about time the world got to know South Korean director Park Chan-wook. His "vengeance" trilogy (and its middle segment Oldboy in particular) made an indelible impression on many but Stoker, Park's frighteningly meticulous English-language debut starring Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska and Matthew Goode, will considerably broaden his reach. This master of the macabre may have toned it down a tad for his ninth film but the majestic violence and taboo infatuations are pleasingly present and correct. 

When Cesar (Luis Tosar) sees Clara (Marta Etura) leave for work in the mornings, he wants to wipe the smile from her face. And as the barely noticed caretaker of her Barcelona apartment building, he’s in the perfect position to do so. Cesar is a strange monster for this psychological thriller from Jaume Balaguero, director of the visceral hit [REC] horror films: a misanthrope so incapable of happiness, he feels others’ laughter like a stab. His hospitalised, mute mother is the silent confessor who weeps horrified tears at his plans.